Bates Smart’s multi-million-dollar top to tail transformation of the 144-room Adina Town Hall Sydney is timeless, sophisticated and aims to create a beautiful, liveable space that will make guests return time and time again to the inner-city address.

Kitchens to revolve around: The new-look Adina Town Hall offers freedom and comfort to stay your own way. Download images here.

With the TOGA-owned property slated to open in February, TFE Hotels has today released the first look at the stunning room prototypes which exude a warm, casual elegance, and showcase interior design aimed at making guests feel instantly at home in the space.

Bates Smart Interior Design’s Director, Brenton Smith, said he firmly believed that the more a person felt at home, the more it becomes their own space, and had embodied those principles into the hotel’s design.

“First and foremost for us, our approach was to make the Adina feel more like a residence,” he said. “This meant we took off our hotel hats and designed a beautiful apartment that we’d like to live in.”

From the arrival experience in the lobby-cum-living room – with a striking circular banquette, warm and calm colours, and reception pods that invite one-on-one interaction to the use of timber, and the inviting furniture in room - each detail has been curated to provide a warm, uncluttered welcome.

At the Adina, the devil is in the design details. Spotlights shine on curtains which hug the corners of the room and invite you into the space; sculptural brass sticks double as door handles; atmospheric lighting that projects shapes and patterns on wallpaper; and a beautiful brass drum invites guests to congregate in the kitchen with a glass of wine as they prepare meals, have all been thoughtfully considered.

“This project was about maximising the space of the hotel and using it in a very purposeful way that makes it look like it was always meant to be,” Smith says. “There’s a level of warmth here as if the room is putting its arms around you and giving you a bit of a hug.” 

Smith says the bathroom is the favourite room in the “house.”

“The vanity unit was designed as a make-up vanity with lighting detail and a lovely drawer. There’s even a moment when you enter and there’s an ottoman in there that feels upscale and not at all hotel-like.”

Group Chief Operating Officer, Chris Sedgwick, said Adina Town Hall was the first Adina property to be reinvented under the Adina Hotels brand refresh and hinted that there were more brand moments in store when the property opens next February.

“This major scale project represents a huge repositioning of the asset, and ultimately supports our contemporary vision for the Adina brand,” Sedgwick said.

“Elevating the Adina brand and hotel experience across our network is our absolute goal - city by city and hotel by hotel,” he said.

With its stunning transformation, Adina Town Hall remains one of the city’s most sought-after hotels stretching 27 storeys above Sydney’s bustling CBD and affording incredible views from many rooms across Darling Harbour and the cityscape – including a bird’s eye view of Sydney’s iconic Town Hall and historic Clock Tower.

Once the renovation concludes, the hotel will join a new generation of Adina-branded addresses that opened in the last few years including the iconic Adina Apartment Hotel Pentridge Melbourne (February 2023) and Adina Apartment Hotel Geneva (March 2023); and the refurbishment of both Adina Apartment Hotel Melbourne on Flinders (January 2023) and Adina Apartment Hotel Chippendale (March 2022).

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